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F-35 Cancelled, then what ?

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F-35 Cancelled, then what ?

Old 11th Mar 2013, 14:27
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They are actually complaining about the luxurious ample headrest, which they found too large when compared to their itty bitty f-16 one

actually, I don't recall seeing mirrors in the f-35, I must go and find some pics of the cockpit

Last edited by JSFfan; 11th Mar 2013 at 14:39.
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Old 11th Mar 2013, 14:32
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Who is "they" JSFfan and in what context is the head rest being complained about? Rearward vis or overly comfortable cockpit?
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Old 11th Mar 2013, 14:47
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They just don't get the 5th gen concept yet

http://pogoarchives.org/straus/ote-i...o-20130215.pdf

The out-of-cockpit visibility in the F-35 is less than other Air Force fighter aircraft.
8 One rated the degree to which the visibility deficiencies impeded or degraded training effectiveness as “Moderate;” the other three rated it as “High” or “Very High.” The majority of responses cited poor visibility; the ejection seat headrest and the canopy bow were identified as causal factors. “High glare shield” and the HMD cable were also cited as sources of the problem. Of these, only the HMD cable has the potential to be readily redesigned.

In three cases, student pilots explicitly cited visibility-related impacts that could be directly applicable to the Block 1A syllabus (a largely benign visual search environment); several other implicitly did so.

Last edited by JSFfan; 11th Mar 2013 at 14:53.
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Old 11th Mar 2013, 14:53
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But if they were to make the headrest smaller, then they'd beable to see the rear cockpit bulkhead and that would become the problem. It's always been perfectly clear that this airframe was not designed with rearward visibility in mind. Given the width of the cockpit and the front combing, downward and forward vis can't have been too far up the list either.
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Old 11th Mar 2013, 14:59
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Yes, but they can't see out the back, let alone the bulkhead because of the super dooper headrest and the cockpit doesn't have mirrors,
[if only they had something that would give them 360 deg SA]

In three cases, student pilots explicitly cited visibility-related impacts that could be directly applicable to the Block 1A syllabus (a largely benign visual search environment); several other implicitly did so.

Last edited by JSFfan; 11th Mar 2013 at 16:10.
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Old 12th Mar 2013, 14:49
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What is surprising is... that the rearward visibility limit surprised anybody.

When you design an airplane with the equivalent of a regional-jet engine stuffed vertically behind the seat, providing the pilot with a view around said engine is clearly problematical.

On the other hand, the new entrants to the JSF pilot community have been living on the same diet of propaganda that LMT feeds to the rest of the world (with the aid of shills and Internet-tough-guy know-nothings) so anything short of miracles comes as an unpleasant surprise.
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Old 12th Mar 2013, 15:04
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JSFfan,

You need to hop on over to Cdr Sharkey Ward's private asylum, Sharkey's World, where the deluded fool has posted a wonderful piece of "analysis" that irrefutably proves that the UK must buy F-18 instead of F-35. It looks reasonably easy to disprove (as is usual for his psychopathic rages) so it shouldn't take you long to shoot him down.

Happy hunting
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Old 12th Mar 2013, 16:25
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F-35 fighter forced to land in Texas en route to Nevada air base - Yahoo! News

-RP
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Old 12th Mar 2013, 18:18
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Courtney Mil, what? and miss all the fun here...never

LO, yes a big fan and 2 engines will be better ..I don't recall LM making big claims for the current block 1a, could you expand?


I don't know why the air forces don't listen to bloggers and agenda driven journalists these days, but it looks like another will join
Singapore set to complete F-35 assessment
"For the longer term, the Republic of Singapore Air Force has identified the F-35 as a suitable aircraft to further modernise our fighter fleet," he added. "We are now in the final stages of evaluating the F-35."

Last edited by JSFfan; 12th Mar 2013 at 18:23.
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Old 12th Mar 2013, 19:13
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JSFfan, you don't have to miss a beat here just to sort out the decrepit sailor, my friend. If anyone can spike his guns, I'm sure you can.
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Old 12th Mar 2013, 19:29
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It's a wonder why he doesn't submit his work to AVWEEK, it exceeds the bar that Sweetman set
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Old 12th Mar 2013, 21:24
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F-35 canopy view when open - looking through it from front - for 'JSFfan': http://www.codeonemagazine.com/image...28237_3530.jpg


Edited version:


Last edited by SpazSinbad; 12th Mar 2013 at 21:51. Reason: Photo
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Old 12th Mar 2013, 22:12
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The future of stealth acc. to the US NAVY

JSF Nieuws.nl
Last year in an interview (DODBuzz) admiral Greenert “painted a fairly bleak picture of the value of manned stealthy combat aircraft, which seems like a vote of no confidence for the Joint Strike Fighter program in regards to its effectiveness, utility and need.”

The Limits of Stealth

And in an opinion article in Proceedings Magazine of the US Naval Institute admiral Greenert wrote: “The rapid expansion of computing power also ushers in new sensors and methods that will make stealth and its advantages increasingly difficult to maintain above and below the water.”
(../..)
“For example, an aircraft or ship is designed to have a small signature or radar return when it is approaching a threat sensor—or has a “nose-on” aspect. Improved computer processing will produce new techniques that can detect stealth platforms at target aspects from which they have higher radar returns. Multiple active radars, for instance, can combine their returns through a battle-management computer so radar detections from a stealth platform’s less-stealthy side, underside, or rear aspect can be shared and correlated to allow the stealth platform to be detected and attacked. Similarly, passive radar receivers can capture the electromagnetic energy that comes from transmitters of opportunity—such as cell-phone or TV towers—and bounces off a stealth platform at a variety of angles. With better processing in the future, those weak, fragmented signals can be combined to create actionable target information.
Those developments do not herald the end of stealth, but they do show the limits of stealth design in getting platforms close enough to use short-range weapons. Maintaining stealth in the face of new and diverse counterdetection methods would require significantly higher fiscal investments in our next generation of platforms. It is time to consider shifting our focus from platforms that rely solely on stealth to also include concepts for operating farther from adversaries using standoff weapons and unmanned systems—or employing electronic-warfare payloads to confuse or jam threat sensors rather than trying to hide from them.” So far US Navy admiral Jonathan Greenert.

The relative small production quantity of F-35C (planning only 260); the fact that the US Navy will be the only operator; in combination with the technical problems; the delays of the Initial Operational Capability until 2019; the continuation of the production of the successful F/A-18 Super Hornet and the planned accelerated development of X-47B like carrier launched unmanned stealth aircraft are a combined, but growing and serious threat to the continuation of the F-35C development and production.

Source:
Prceedings, July 2012; Vol 138/7/1313; US Naval Institute; Admiral Jonathan Greenert; “Payloads over Platforms; charting a new course”
DODBuzz; 3-jul-2012; “Did CNO just take a big swipe at F-35?”
Reuters; 12-mar-2013; Cutting whole U.S. Navy buy of F-35s would hurt: top officer
Prices soar, enthusiasm dives for F-35 Lightning; pilots worry about visibility problem - Washington Times
Also interesting how General Bogdan, Retired Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations from 2007 to 2011, and the Boss of the USMC all seem to come to the conclusion that the JSF has basically given up on the joint part and developed into 3 separate fighters hampered too much by their commonality which is a big reason for the price inflation.
The US NAVY Admiral basically proposes to give up entirely on the A version and also doubts the value of the B, the USAF on the other hand prefers the A version because they want a light weight fighter, which is kind of ironic since it is anything but light.
Retired Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations from 2007 to 2011, wrote a recent article for his new employer, the Hoover Institution, on how to reduce military costs. One idea: scrap the F-35A.

“My whole idea there was, even though there are a lot of commonalities, if you had one conventional takeoff-and-landing [feature], would you save on training pipeline? Would you save on the depot level work because of the fact you just have that one variant going through rework lines and perhaps logistics would come down?” Adm. Roughead told The Washington Times. “And then software changes would be more common to that one variant.”

Adm. Roughead, a career surface ship and fleet commander, said he canceled the DDG 1000, a next-generation destroyer, in 2008 because of projected long-term costs.

Pentagon officials have said in audit reports that the F-35’s 30-year, $1 trillion operating bill is not affordable.

“Both the Navy and the Air Force would fly the C,” Adm. Roughead said of his proposal. “You need the [F-35] coming off of aircraft carriers simply because of what the environments are going to be 10, 20, 30 years from now.

“You’ve got to stay with the carrier variant. But because it’s a conventional takeoff-and-landing aircraft, can you then make that one of two, as opposed to one of three, variants?”

The Air Force fighter community wants its own lighter-weight plane. And it is doing some second-guessing of its own on why the Pentagon agreed to a special vertical landing-and-takeoff Marine Corps version, the F-35B.

Read more: Prices soar, enthusiasm dives for F-35 Lightning; pilots worry about visibility problem - Washington Times
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/652948.pdf
Also the last intermediate GAO rapport certainly had some positive notes
on the technical front with a lot of promises that many of the ongoing issues seem to have a solution in the future but when it comes to price the promises become rather vague and doubtful, as it stands no JSF batch pre 2017 will have a then year dollar average unit fly away price below 160 million$, this means nowhere near the 67million$ (more like 112 million$ in 2001$), post 2017 when production-rate goes up they somehow hope for a very drastic price reduction substantiated by exactly nothing, going on previous estimates unit prices will even go further up until 2019-2022 after which it would level of.

Not too long ago they hoped for an eventual baseline 2001 unit flyaway price of 106million$.
As things stand now the long term price projections are nothing short of voodoo science, nobody in their right mind can predict price levels more than 10 years into the future, we can only spot a trend and predict from that further forward, in the F35's case things look rather bleak on that front, not even thinking about the operational costs here.

Best thing about the JSF, the whole Nothrop-EODAS package, is now ready to be implemented on other platforms (acc. to Northrop themselves), pretty much negating the need for the JSF as a whole.
F16XL+EODAS or F18SSH+EODAS or any other platform which can get the Northrop system is pretty much as good as the F35, apart from the highly doubtful stealth characteristics and most likely cheaper to operate and with better flight and fight characteristics.
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Old 12th Mar 2013, 23:35
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The first phrase from 'DODbuzz' is not made by the Admirable but by the DODcrud author. A spokesman for the Admirable clarifed the Admirable's intention later so that it reflects the Admirable's recent words below....

UPDATE 1-Cutting C-model from U.S. Navy F-35 program would hurt -Admiral 12 Mar 2013

UPDATE 1-Cutting C-model from U.S. Navy F-35 program would hurt -Admiral | Reuters

"WASHINGTON, March 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy's top officer on Tuesday said it would harm the overall F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program if the Navy completely scrapped its plans to buy 260 C-model planes that can land on carriers, but did not rule out a possible reduction in orders.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert told an investor conference that the Navy was committed to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and needed the new capabilities it offered, but the Lockheed Martin Corp was still working through technical challenges at this point.
"We're in ... We need the F-35C; we need its capability. It has stealth, range, big payload capacity and an enormous electronic attack (capability)," Greenert told a conference hosted by Credit Suisse and defense consultant Jim McAleese.
Greenert said the new plane's capabilities were "tremendous," but there was still expensive work to do on integrating the F-35 into the Navy's carrier air wings.
"So the question becomes how many do we buy, and how does it integrate into the air wing," he said. "We are just sort of getting into the details of that."
Greenert said any move by the Navy to eliminate its total purchase would increase the cost per plane of the other models, but would also have consequences for other countries interested in buying the C-model.
"If we bought no Cs that would be very detrimental to the overall program because that's numbers," Greenert said, noting that any reduction in orders would raise the cost of the remaining planes to be purchased."
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Old 13th Mar 2013, 00:54
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The first phrase from 'DODbuzz' is not made by the Admirable but by the DODcrud author. A spokesman for the Admirable clarifed the Admirable's intention later so that it reflects the Admirable's recent words below.
DoD Buzz was directly quoting the Admiral about his view on stealth, that's where the comment "Last year in an interview (DODBuzz) admiral Greenert “painted a fairly bleak picture of the value of manned stealthy combat aircraft, which seems like a vote of no confidence for the Joint Strike Fighter program in regards to its effectiveness, utility and need.” came from, it might be their interpretation but it is backed up by what the admiral said as can be checked on this Navy institute website.
Payloads over Platforms: Charting a New Course | U.S. Naval Institute
this was basically his conclusion about the subject of stealth;
Those developments do not herald the end of stealth, but they do show the limits of stealth design in getting platforms close enough to use short-range weapons. Maintaining stealth in the face of new and diverse counterdetection methods would require significantly higher fiscal investments in our next generation of platforms. It is time to consider shifting our focus from platforms that rely solely on stealth to also include concepts for operating farther from adversaries using standoff weapons and unmanned systems—or employing electronic-warfare payloads to confuse or jam threat sensors rather than trying to hide from them.
besides some more interesting stuff was said in the end
while new ship and aircraft classes likely will continue to require more than a decade to join the Fleet. We appear to be reaching the limits of how much a platform’s inherent stealth can affordably get it close enough to survey or attack adversaries. And our fiscal situation will continue to require difficult trade-offs, requiring us to look for new ways to control costs while remaining relevant.
Also again places the comments about the lack of commonality between the A/B/C and its subsequent price implications into perspective, they have now effectively become 3 separate platforms and every single one of them is hampered by the commonality part that remains, maybe scrapping the A and even B might not be a bad idea, the C can than be optimised and used by all services ,just like the F18 works today.
Common hulls and airframes will decrease and stabilize shipbuilding and aircraft construction costs through the learning curve of serial production
Somewhere down the road they seem to have lost their vision about what the JSF was supposed to be, 1 common platform for 3 services became 3 different aircraft designed around 1 common general idea, it sounds the same but is in effect diametrically opposed to the original concept.
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Old 13th Mar 2013, 01:24
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The DODbuzzED clarificaton (always re-interpreted of course - but hey that is what they get paid for - right?).

The Navy’s advanced weapons shopping list By Philip Ewing July 3rd, 2012

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/07/03/th...shopping-list/

There’s a reason Adm. Jonathan Greenert didn’t call for the Navy to back out of F-35, his spokesman said Tuesday — he doesn’t think it should. The chief of naval operations continues to support F-35C, said Capt. Danny Hernandez. So what was all that stealth skepticism in his Proceedings piece this month questioning the value of low-observable strike aircraft? That was Greenert arguing that stealth has a limit, Hernandez said, and that there may come a point at which the Navy has to draw the line or risk diminishing returns. Greenert believes one alternative is relying on tomorrow’s more precise, longer-range munitions to reach out and touch the bad guy. That way stealth makes less of a difference because you can stay out of his range. What does that mean in terms of programs?..."
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Old 13th Mar 2013, 14:27
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Spaz - Because anonymous Internet posters are always more credible than people who put their names and professional reputations on the line?

What's interesting is that the Adm. says:

"So the question becomes how many do we buy, and how does it integrate into the air wing," he said. "We are just sort of getting into the details of that."


Because according to the program of record, the Navy Dept. total was set at 680, back in 2004 IIRC, and the Navy and Marines agreed in 2011 that there would be 340 Bs and 340 Cs, 80 of the latter being USMC-badged. So officially "the details of that" were already settled.
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Old 13th Mar 2013, 14:52
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Navy and Marines agreed in 2011 that there would be 340 Bs and 340 Cs, 80 of the latter being USMC-badged. So officially "the details of that" were already settled.
That was before the price continued to go up and the AF Secretary made the following statement. The price goes up, the number goes down; so the price goes up and the numbers go down......

"No more money" for F-35 cost overruns: Pentagon

(Reuters) - Future cost overruns on the stealthy new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter built by Lockheed Martin Corp will reduce how many planes the U.S. military will ultimately buy, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told a Senate committee on Tuesday.

Donley said the latest restructuring of the $382 billion program should allow the program to proceed with the "least risk," a message repeated by the Pentagon's F-35 program manager, chief weapons buyer and the Air Force acquisition chief at a separate House of Representatives subcommittee hearing........

Donley told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the F-35 program office and Lockheed had been told there was "no more money to put against contract overruns or problems." Any further cost growth would cut the total number of planes bought, he said, "because no more money is going to be migrating into this program," he said............
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Old 13th Mar 2013, 15:38
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Could that not start a bit of a vicious circle? Something in the program costs more, therefore the government buys fewer of them, therefore the unit price goes up..... ...until a coutry decides it's all getting too much and pulls out, therefore the unit cost goes up, therefore...

If you see my point.
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Old 13th Mar 2013, 15:53
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Why the hell are the marines getting 420 aircraft yet the navy are only getting 260??? Who let the marines get so important in this programme, the whole thing stinks of them hijacking it and the aircraft is seriously compromised as a result...and all for them to fill a questionable requirement!

Pretty ridiculous if you ask me!
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